


The Killing Dance

by JoeLawson



Category: Van Helsing (2004)
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-30
Updated: 2010-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoeLawson/pseuds/JoeLawson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even a Church-approved human weapon needs a little tenderness sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Killing Dance

He had killed Dracula.

Gabriel Van Helsing had killed the King of the Undead.

He had killed Dracula. Again, apparently.

It had been three weeks now, and he still had to repeat it to himself silently on occasion. Had to convince himself that yes, he'd won. Was more or less intact, too; in body at least. People tended to argue about his sanity. He still suffered from nightmares; woke up in the middle of the night half convinced he'd heard the rustle of leathery wings out there in the dark, or the hiss of a derisive snicker, like powdered bone dancing in the wind.

It was like this sometimes, in the aftermath of facing a monster so huge, so savage, so indestructible in its evil that the idea of sending one single warrior to confront it appeared to be nothing short of insanity. He'd gone up against creatures that by right should've crushed him with one swipe of their mighty paws, should've ripped into him with their fangs and claws and left him battered and bleeding... and some of them had. His skin and mind bore the scars of countless battles, a good number of which he couldn't even remember.

There was no past for him. No future. Nothing but an endless crusade against overwhelming odds, for there was always one more fiend around the corner, one more enemy of the Church that needed to be slain. He was a weapon. Human in appearance, maybe, cunning and mostly self-reliant, but when it came down to it, he was nothing but a finely tuned machine of destruction and he knew it.

There were moments, especially after yet another close call, when he took a step back and allowed himself to wonder just how much blood he'd spilled. His career as the Church's Executioner alone would probably account for a small lake, and that was without adding the Time Before. The past he couldn't remember. If Dracula had been telling the truth and not just messing with his mind - which he wouldn't put past the smug bastard - he might well be the end-product of four hundred or more years of violence. It would explain the dreams he'd had lately of drowning in rivers and oceans of blood, pulled under by the specters of the hellspawn he'd slaughtered.

It wore on him, this bleak existence that passed as his life. He was getting tired of throwing himself into the old killing dance without a break or a chance to take comfort in non-hostile human company. By now he was so twisted and broken he didn't even know if he _could_ reconnect with the people he was protecting.

He certainly hadn't done so well with Carl or Anna Valerious.

Anna... Anna had been too much like him to remind him of his humanity. Anna had been a carefully honed blade, beautiful and lethal. He'd felt an instant kinship with her, like the satisfying 'snikt' of two parts of one weapon coming together, united in a deadly purpose. She'd had a ruthlessness about her that matched his own, her only weakness the love she felt for her brother and - whether Velkan was a werewolf or not - Gabriel didn't have it in him to blame her for it. Love shouldn't count as a failing. He owed her for reminding him of that.

She had died by his hands, because she'd covered his back like she'd promised. There was a peculiar irony in the fact that Gabriel Van Helsing had managed what Dracula and all his minions hadn't accomplished in four centuries: he had wiped out the last remains of the Valerious family. Death came far too easy to him these days. Or maybe it had always been this way?

And Carl... It was easier to treat the smart-mouthed young friar like an annoying pet than an equal, simply because Carl let him and wasn't cowed by the occasional bark or snide comment. Offended, yes. Spitting mad, if pushed too far, but never frightened of Gabriel. He'd never once threatened to leave either; instead he'd defied his superiors for his partner's sake, had stood by his side through panic and gore and impending lycanthropy. His loyalty was a rare gift the great Van Helsing didn't know how to handle.

He should've sent Carl away when Anna's death made it clear that nothing good could come from Gabriel's presence, but he'd found himself unable to do what was necessary. His own wounds were still too raw to let him fight again and Carl wouldn't have gone without one hell of a struggle. He might not be a soldier, at least certainly not among the elite of the Vatican's warriors, but what he lacked in martial skills he more than made up for in pure stubborn. For some unexplainable reason, Carl had gone from a very reluctant assistant to deciding he was Gabriel's friend and obviously for him that meant sticking close and alternately patching up Van Helsing's gear and Gabriel himself. His company proved to be surprisingly unobtrusive, soothing even, so Gabriel's few attempts of getting rid of him were embarrassingly half-hearted.

* * *

In the weeks since Dracula's demise they'd traveled back to Rome, where Gabriel was promptly scolded for allowing the Valerious bloodline to perish and then sent back into the field with a few sharp words and an ominous hint or two about a past that sounded less desirable by the minute. He conveniently forgot to mention his temporary foray into werewolfdom in his debriefing; apparently, so did Carl, because nobody bothered to make them specify how exactly Van Helsing had dispatched with one of the world's most powerful vampires.

The reports had holes large enough to drive one of Anna's carriages through - starting with the woman's inability to write off her brother as a casualty and ending with the minor detail that Frankenstein's monster was still gracing the earth with its existence - but these things weren't what weighed heavily on Gabriel's mind as they made their way towards Egypt to bag some sort of zombified mummy... or maybe it was a mummified zombie, Gabriel hadn't really paid attention during the mission brief.

He didn't know how Carl had convinced the Cardinal to send him along on this new assignment, but he'd been shocked to discover how pleased he was when upon boarding the ship he heard the pitter patter of big feet in heavy travel boots and the clinking of vials and swishing of possibly highly dangerous liquids and Carl panted up the gangway after him, breathless and excited and disgruntled.

"What the hell is this?" Gabriel had demanded with an annoyance more born of habit than true irritation.

Carl hadn't been notably impressed. He'd rummaged through his big leather bag with a little frown of concentration. "You'd think that'd be obvious. I'm coming with you. Say, is it my imagination, or do you smell acid?"

The resultant frantic scramble to get rid of a leaking vial before the contents ate through the bag, Gabriel's foot, and the ship had distracted the warrior enough to keep him from bodily throwing his brilliant but inexperienced companion overboard. By the time he realized that he'd been thoroughly outmaneuvered by a pup of a bookworm, they'd long set sail and were on their way and Carl had Gabriel in his cabin with his shirt off so he could check on the soft pink scars on Gabriel's chest.

The situation hadn't gotten better as the journey progressed.

Gabriel was still plagued by flashbacks of his confrontation with Dracula and it didn't help that Carl's badly hidden worry - so unexpected in its sincerity and quiet intensity - made him almost want to confess a couple of details he'd rather repress. Like how Dracula had talked to him, as if they knew each other; knew each other far too well. The way the vampire had looked at him, with a hunger that had nothing to do with bloodlust, hadn't tried to kill him until the end and even then... he shuddered in his bunk, squeezed his eyes shut in the dark.

It was no use; the memories were upon him and he could do nothing but ride them out in painful silence so as not to wake the young man who slept fitfully on the cot in the corner. It had felt so good to shed his human skin under the light of the moon, to strip off the shackles of his old body and stretch out in his new form, powerful and tireless and, God help him, _free_. For a few precious seconds, Gabriel Van Helsing had risen above mere existence and had, perhaps for the first time ever, been truly alive. Then he'd locked eyes with Dracula, and the undead son-of-a-bitch had smiled and reached out with his mind and tried to slap the reborn soul into irons yet again.

He still trembled every time he was assaulted by the echo of the sickening sensation of something like dirty, rotting fingers digging into the very core of his being in an attempt to connect with him, enslave him. Dracula had torn away the illusion of independence and brutally reminded him of who and what he really was. He'd deserved to die for that alone.

How could Gabriel tell Carl, who trusted and admired him despite everything he knew about the man behind the legend, that for one very long moment, Van Helsing had happily and wholeheartedly switched sides and embraced the beast within? How could he admit it hadn't been duty or righteousness that had driven him to tangle with the vampire and rip his throat out but a feeling of betrayal and violation that had overwhelmed every last shred of humanity he might've still possessed? He'd felt like he'd been raped by a man who might've been his lover, and it had made him attack the other instantly, mercilessly.

Afterwards, he'd had another taste of the glorious freedom the moon had granted him, only to turn around and face the end of it in form of one sassy female monster hunter. Wolf-Gabriel hadn't killed Anna because he was a mindless hellhound; he had fought her because she'd carried the cure for his condition and he hadn't wanted to change back into the creature he'd been before; more than a man, less than a person. He hadn't intended to snap her neck; after going _mano a mano_ with a giant vampire bat, he'd simply underestimated his strength and her fragile human bones had given under his touch before he could think of adjusting his grip. Not that it had saved him. The last of the Valeriouses had left him a painful goodbye-present by ramming the damn syringe into his belly. He supposed he'd deserved it.

"Are you all right?"

The voice startled him so badly he was off the bed, back to the wall, long silver knife in one fist and pistol in the other, before his brain could slap down his fight-and-kill response with the information that no, Dracula hadn't risen from the dead again, and yes, he'd probably just scared the shit out of his only friend. He sank down onto his bunk with a choked sound he hoped Carl would interpret as a sardonic laugh and carefully put his weapons away while he tried to calm his racing heart. Trust Carl to make his blood-pressure shoot through the roof when not even Dracula himself had gotten so much as a nervous thrum out of him.

"Can't sleep?" he asked in an attempt to divert the younger man's attention. It wouldn't do to let Carl realize just how high-strung his heavily armed companion was tonight.

Wood creaked, fabric rustled, and then Carl was up and padding across the small cabin. He'd found his sea legs effortlessly, which greatly annoyed Gabriel, who wasn't too fond of ships in general and the sea in particular. The thought of being surrounded by nothing but sky and water, dependent on a bunch of glorified twigs to keep him afloat, made him extremely nervous. God alone knew what creatures lurked in the great depths beneath the water's surface, and the lack of escape routes resulted in one edgy Van Helsing. He didn't give a shit about how much time traveling by ship saved; Gabriel wanted firm ground under his feet.

Carl sat down beside him with a little yawn, which stopped the mental rant cold.

"What the hell are you doing?" Gabriel inquired suspiciously. "Go back to your own bed, this one's occupied."

"Believe me, if I thought I could sleep a wink with all the heavy brooding going on in your half of the cabin, I'd be off and gone. But since you're a _loud_ thinker, I'm afraid I have to insist."

Gabriel blinked, thrown off-balance by the contrast between the biting words and the caring tone of voice. "Insist on what?" he asked, against his better judgment.

"That you tell me what's going on." Carl sighed and for the first time Gabriel noticed how tired his friend sounded. "I don't know how you do it," the friar said quietly.

The sudden change in topic did nothing to help Gabriel regain his mental footing. "Do what?"

"All of it." A whoosh of air in the darkness and the sense of motion from beside him warned Gabriel that he was dealing with one of Carl's more expressive arm gestures and he ducked out of the way of a waving hand swiftly. "The tension. The fighting. The almost-getting-killed. And then the Cardinal." He huffed out an irritated breath. "I've seen you two interact before. You come back from some mission bruised and tired and ready to bite everybody's head off and he'll send you right back into the field, like some trained dog. I never thought about it much. You were _Van Helsing_." And damned if there wasn't still that tiny trace of awe in his voice when he said that.

It was never easy following Carl's rants when he got going, but usually Gabriel felt safe in the knowledge that it was only the sheer torrent of scientific terms and the creative zigzags of that gifted mind that made him lose track of what his companion was talking about. This time he suspected he should be able to follow, but he just didn't get it. He frowned. "I'm still Van Helsing." It wasn't like he was any more damaged than usual. Dracula had shaken him some, but it would pass. "What's your point?"

"My point is-" Carl stopped. He gestured again, obviously frustrated. Gabriel leaned back to avoid getting smacked in the face and felt his lips twitch into a smile. Carl growled then deflated audibly. "I don't know. I guess I never realized you were human before. I never thought anything about the council sending you out to kill or bring in those monsters all on your own."

"I work best if I work alone." Damn it, he hadn't wanted to sound so defensive.

Carl snorted. "Well, you'd be dead or Dracula's pet-werewolf if you'd gone up against him alone," he pointed out. He was right, which didn't help Gabriel's mood any.

He glared at Carl. It was a waste of a good scowl, since the other man couldn't see him in the darkness, but it made him feel marginally better. "Go back to bed." He tried not to make it too obvious an order.

"I can't. You're traumatized."

Gabriel's jaw dropped. "I'm what?"

"Traumatized." There was that stubborn I'm-right-so-you-better-give-in-now-and-save-yourself-the-embarrassment tone again. The one that had heralded Dracula's doom with extensive use of visual aids. "You know, suffering from an emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis."

Gabriel didn't know whether to laugh or punch Carl. "Did you just call me neurotic?"

"No, I called you traumatized. It means I think the business with Dracula left its marks on you and you're trying to deal with the after-effects and it will probably make things only worse if you don't talk about it."

This was getting ridiculous. "I don't _want_ to talk about it."

Carl shifted so he was facing Gabriel in the dark. It was a useless exercise since there was no way in hell he could make out anything beyond a shadow, but it certainly heightened Gabriel's awareness of him. "Why not?"

"Because it's private. I'm a private person, in case you didn't notice. Would you stop prying?"

"So you admit there is something wrong?"

Christ, sometimes Carl was worse than a woman. Not that Gabriel had much experience with those either. His work didn't leave him much time or opportunity for relationships that exceeded a quick fuck in a halfway secure location. Then again, this might actually be a feasible way of shutting the good friar up. It wouldn't be a hardship either. Carl was a good-looking man and Gabriel had never cared about the Church's rules about who was to sleep with whom... or not. Wasn't any of their business where a soldier got what little pleasure he could find. "Carl?"

"Yes?" The reply came immediately, if a bit apprehensively.

Gabriel thought about asking for permission, but he'd never been a man of many words and he figured if Carl didn't want him, he'd state his objections clearly and unmistakably. He'd never hesitated to do so before. Gabriel was fairly sure Carl was interested though. He'd seen the way the other man looked at him from time to time, with a hunger that almost matched Dracula's, and now was probably as good a moment as any to do something about the mutual attraction.

The first brush of his lips against Carl's skin missed that pretty mouth by far and landed on what felt like an eyebrow. Carl jerked in surprise and almost bashed Gabriel's nose in with his forehead. "Gabriel? What are you...?"

No. Talking bad. Gabriel was nicely distracted now; he didn't want to get back to that inane conversation about his life or lack thereof and his questionable sanity. It was so much better to focus on the moment, to pretend, just for a short while, that they weren't a friar and an assassin, only two human beings in dire need of a little comfort. So he leaned in again, found another spot on Carl's face - the nose, this time; hard to miss that nose - and slowly kissed his way south to the lips he'd been fantasizing about on more than one occasion. The scratching of rough whiskers gave way to the smooth glide of petal softness and Gabriel closed his eyes and lost himself in the sweet caresses of Carl's mouth.

So different from the few kisses he'd received before. Less foreplay than welcome and affirmation, backed by a masculine confidence that shouldn't have been so surprising considering the identity of his partner. This was no whore or a comrade-in-arms looking for relief. This was Carl, smart, snarky, solid Carl, who'd wormed his way inside several layers of Van Helsing's armor before Gabriel had so much as laid eyes on Anna.

He paused.

The last person he'd kissed had been Anna, and he'd ended up killing her.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

He drew back reluctantly and missed the intimacy instantly. His body ached for more contact of skin against skin; his soul yearned for a hand to touch him with gentleness instead of out of lust or intent to hurt. He didn't want to risk Carl - risk hurting him, risk losing him - but he was so starved for affection he couldn't help a low moan of need when a strong hand reached out to cup his face. Carl's thumb stroked over his bristly cheek with so much tenderness Gabriel might've wept if he'd had any tears left.

"Is this what you need?" There were no recriminations in the soft question, no rejection. "Is this what you want?"

His throat was dry when he swallowed; Carl's unexpected kindness had shaken him. He wasn't sure what kind of reaction he'd expected, but somehow, this hadn't been it. "Do _you_ want it?" he asked hoarsely, because suddenly this was important. He'd thought he wanted to fuck Carl to shut him up, stop him from poking at still fresh wounds, but now he discovered that he couldn't. Tonight, he needed to feel that somebody in this world cared for him, wanted to be with him. He wanted to interrupt the killing dance and move to a different song, if only for a few hours.

"Let me put it this way," Carl muttered, a lot closer now than he'd been before. "If I could choose between my very own laboratory complete with a big supply of research assistants and unlimited access to funding and testing facilities, or lying with you tonight, I'd..." He hesitated. His eyes glazed over a little; he cursed under his breath. "...I'd take you. But I'd reserve the right to remind you of my big sacrifice for a long time to come."

That, Gabriel supposed, was as close to a declaration of undying love as it got with Carl. Or maybe they were talking lust and loyalty and friendship here. He didn't really care. He wasn't sure he believed in love anymore, not for himself, but he did believe in lust and loyalty and he was learning to believe in friendship, too.

God help him, he needed this. He needed to stop being Van Helsing and start being Gabriel for somebody who wouldn't turn into a monster bat and try to eviscerate him if things didn't turn out the way he'd planned.

"Think you can take me?" he taunted gently. "What're you going to do? Nail me with that silver stake?"

"Don't even joke about this," Carl snapped. "It's not funny." No, maybe not. The idea of being impaled by three feet of polished silver didn't do much for Gabriel's peace of mind. It was an irony he didn't appreciate. Carl leaned forward abruptly and Gabriel's thoughts stuttered to a nervous halt. "I don't need a stake anyway."

He didn't?

Warm breath kissed the side of Gabriel's neck, raising gooseflesh on his arms and making his muscles tremble in the effort to suppress the instinctive defense reaction. Then a slick tongue touched his skin and slowly followed his jugular up. It licked along his jaw, found his mouth, and dived in with gusto. Oh God. Oh sweet God. The feel and taste was addictive as absinthe, only without the bitterness. By the time Carl came up for air, Gabriel was lying flat on his back with his legs spread wide and Carl's weight hot and hard on top of him.

Seemed like Carl really didn't need that silver stake to nail Van Helsing.

And as he relaxed into the bedding and let Carl lead him into this new dance, Gabriel couldn't help thinking that this was a good thing indeed.

 

**The End**


End file.
